Central Asia as a new potential hotbed of conflicts and wars


Ainur Kurmanov, Co-president of the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan

After the restoration of capitalism and counterrevolutionary processes, the former Soviet republics of Central Asia turned into typical bourgeois states with dictatorial regimes. Local Governments have pursued and are pursuing a strict anti-social policy of market transformation and privatization in the interests of local and multinational companies.

At the same time, trade and transport wars are going on between the countries, contradictions and conflicts over limited resources are growing, and the younger generation in a situation of social catastrophe and cultural and educational degradation is poisoned by nationalist and chauvinistic poison, which generally creates a new hotbed of tension in the post-Soviet space.

This is superimposed by the influence of foreign corporations that have seized the most delicious deposits, as well as the struggle of the leading imperialist powers for the redistribution of spheres of influence, raw materials and sales markets, for transport corridors in the region. This situation inevitably leads to clashes and conflicts.

In this article, we want to give a brief analysis of these processes and our assessment of the forces involved in the struggle for the region. From the conclusions in the future, it will be possible to build a class perspective of the movement of workers and the masses for their liberation.

Central Asia in the era of counterrevolution and Decommunization

The defeat of socialism and the collapse of the USSR turned into a real social catastrophe and regression for the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia. But the specifics of this region also lie in the fact that the restoration of capitalism, if we can use this term for a region where there actually was no capitalism before, was carried out by the ruling party elite from above, which transformed into the bourgeoisie class.

In Kazakhstan, former First Secretary of the CPC Nursultan Nazarbayev, in Turkmenistan - former first secretary of the CPC Saparmurad Niyazov, in Uzbekistan – former first Secretary of the CPC Islam Karimov led the process of dismantling the planned economy and pursuing a policy of privatization and the introduction of market reforms.

The exception is Kyrgyzstan, where presidents came to power not from among former party leaders, but where former party cadres played a leading role in market transformations. In Tajikistan, as a result of the 1992-1994 civil war, one of the former party workers and chairman of the collective farm, Emomali Rakhmonov, came to power with the support of the current Communist Party, who later became, like Nazarbayev, Karimov and Niyazov, the permanent leader of the republic and also led the process of establishing capitalism.

As a result of the counter-revolution, the states of Central Asia found themselves under the control of local bourgeois clans and family cliques, which are unable either to keep them viable and developing, or to provide conditions in which countless ethnic groups can live in harmony with each other.

Actually, this does not mean that there can be any more "progressive" and "democratic" capitalism. It's just that capitalism could only be established in these republics in this form with the establishment of reactionary bourgeois-nationalist dictatorships.

Instead of using the region's natural resources to develop the economy and social infrastructure, the ruling elites are actively plundering them with the participation of American, European, British and Chinese mining companies, which have actually begun dividing the region into spheres of influence. In this sense, Central Asia is under pressure from various imperialist players who are engaged in a fierce struggle with each other for influence and for the right to use local resources.

In order to maintain power, the ruling classes in the new formations use the methods of the police state, and in the case of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, in general, we can talk about a harsh dictatorship.

The parties of the bourgeois opposition, where they exist, not only cannot offer the region a way out of the economic catastrophe – they even advocate for democratic rights only when their rights have been infringed. As events in Kyrgyzstan show, various groups of the bourgeois elite can, when it suits them, dress up in the clothes of fighters for democratic rights, and at other times they are quite capable of using national and ethnic differences to divide workers in the struggle for the redistribution of power and property.

The formal administrative borders that divided the Ferghana Valley in Soviet times have now become real, and various regimes keep them closed under all sorts of pretexts. There is a terrifying (if not immediate) prospect of Ferghana turning into a new Kashmir, torn to pieces, occupied by one republic or another, with the help of an indissoluble wall between them. A vivid example is the bloody pogrom of the Uzbek diaspora in the Kyrgyz city of Osh in 2010.

Every year, there are tensions between States over the allocation of water resources, and border conflicts constantly flare up between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. For 33 years after the collapse of the USSR, the leaders of the independent republics in the region have not been able to agree on the joint use of water, land and energy resources, which in a situation of desertification and population growth leads to inevitable interethnic and interstate contradictions.

The regression affected not only labor, but also family relations, and led to the return of the subordinate position of women to men and girls to their parents. Since the 90s, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, the forced extradition of girls and girls for husbands began to be practiced, and the forced abduction of brides spread, which ended in beatings and sexual slavery. The percentage of illiterate women has increased significantly. In Tajikistan, for example, a whole generation of girls aged 18-20 has grown up, among whom more than 50% did not go to school at all, but were engaged in household chores or worked in the fields.

The situation is aggravated by the growth of religious obscurantism, which further contributes to the enslavement of women in the former Soviet Central Asia. This is especially true for Tajikistan, southern Kyrgyzstan and a number of regions of Uzbekistan. Polygamy is becoming an everyday phenomenon, and in Kazakhstan, part of the bourgeoisie practices the practice of keeping young girls and girls acting as additional wives.

Such wild principles are cultivated from above by the ruling class, they are deliberately planted through the preaching of national conservative and patriarchal ideas at the official level. The current leadership in power is also trying to isolate the peoples of the former Soviet Central Asia through the introduction of the Latin alphabet in national languages and by depriving the younger generation of access to the Soviet cultural, scientific and literary heritage. This is certainly accompanied by a general drop in the level of education of young people and women.

Nationalism is also becoming the main ideological core of modern Central Asian states, to which is added militant anti-communism, as well as the praise of participants in the counterrevolutionary Basmach movement, representatives of the Alash party, who fought on the side of White Admiral Kolchak in the Civil War and collaborators who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.

So, in 2017, the Kazakh authorities opened in the city of Kyzyl-Orda a monument to the ideological inspirer and organizer of the Turkestan Legion of the Wehrmacht and Muslim SS units Mustafa Shokai. Streets, shopping malls, libraries are named after him, and films are being shot. There are more and more publications in the press showing legionnaires who served under Hitler as "fighters" against the Stalinist dictatorship.

In Kyrgyzstan, at the end of last year, deputies of all parliamentary factions even initiated a bill on the full rehabilitation of all victims of Soviet rule, including legionnaires of the Turkestan Legion and soldiers of Muslim SS units. It is noteworthy that the lobbyists of this bill were the "Open Government", created with the participation of the American agency USAID, and the notorious Soros Foundation. In neighboring Uzbekistan, in 2022, all prominent leaders of the Basmati movement were rehabilitated.

In parallel, the process of total decommunization is also underway. The Kazakh liberal nationalist Ak Zhol (Bright Path) party is trying to adopt a law on the Holodomor according to Ukrainian patterns, as well as ban communist ideology. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev formed a special commission for "rehabilitation", as a result of which 311 thousand criminals attributed to the "victims of the Bolshevik regime", as well as Basmachi, members of the Turkestan Legion of the Wehrmacht and SS units were acquitted.

Therefore, when approving the nationalist ideology, it is so important to destroy all Soviet monuments. So, the impressions of the barbaric destruction of two monuments to the creator of the Kazakh SSR Mikhail Kalinin are still fresh. Increasingly, we see acts of vandalism against monuments to soldiers of the Red Army, which are not properly investigated by the police.

The current situation in Central Asia in the context of the global economic situation means that the region will continue to experience social and political crises, and while there is no clear class alternative, these crises will be used by various groups of the ruling capitalist class to promote their own political interests. At the top of the social protests, they will put forward a populist program to fool e

It is also obvious that the protest moods and discontent of unemployed youth are redirected by bourgeois groups towards interethnic clashes and harassment of non-titular nations. In the same Kazakhstan, many people still remember the pogroms of Dungans and Uighurs in the south of the republic in 2020-2021.

At the same time, the threat of direct military clashes between states for dwindling resources increases every year.

Clashes between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

In 9 months of 2022, 14 conflicts occurred on the border of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, during some of them border Kyrgyz villages were attacked, and the parties fired at each other from artillery and helicopters. There were skirmishes in 2023 and in 2024. The last object of the dispute was the Golovoi water distribution station, along with the dam and the bridge.

In turn, Dushanbe accuses Bishkek of deliberately violating bilateral agreements with Tajikistan. The press release of the State Committee for National Security of the Republic of Tatarstan indicates that in accordance with the maps of 1924-1927, as well as 1989, "this facility (the Head distribution station. Ed.) belongs entirely to the Republic of Tajikistan and has been used since 1968 for irrigation and water supply in the border regions of the Republics of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan."

The reaction of the Kyrgyz authorities followed immediately and was immediately followed by a statement by Almazbek Sokeev, director of the Water Department of the Kyrgyz Republic, who said that "the water distributor is located on the territory of Kyrgyzstan and at the disposal of Batkenvodokanal." The water comes there from the Ak-Suu River, which is filled from the rivers of the Kyrgyz mountains."

Indeed, judging by archival Soviet documents, the water intake node of the Isfara River irrigation system was built in 1970 on the territory of the Batken district of the Osh region of the Kyrgyz SSR by the Batken SMU of the Oshvodostroy Trust commissioned by the Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources of the Kyrgyz SSR. Moreover, previously there were no problems between the neighbors when using Kyrgyzstan's water resources.

As you can see, the current conflict is happening because of water resources, which are becoming less and less, and their effective distribution requires joint efforts, which is impossible without the creation of supranational structures and general management. In fact, Dushanbe demands to divide the Ak-Suu River, which is impossible in principle. But this is just one problem, which has only become a trigger for collisions.

The fact is that after the collapse of the USSR, disputed areas immediately appeared along the entire length of the previously administrative borders, amounting to about 980 kilometers, because of which there are constant clashes between residents of neighboring now independent countries. The struggle of national states is now going on for water and land resources, for passages, strategic reservoirs, which can cause full-scale military operations or ethnic massacres. Moreover, there are entire Tajik enclaves inside the Kyrgyz Republic, for example, the same Vorukh.

Kyrgyzstan has now managed to resolve all disputed territorial issues with Uzbekistan, which is becoming an important strategic partner, but the situation with Tajikistan cannot end amicably. Although a special interstate commission, consisting of representatives of the national security committees of the two countries, has already demarcated 580 kilometers of the border line, but its work unexpectedly stopped in March 2022.

Perhaps the situation is not moving forward due to the fact that both states consider each other to be equivalent and capable of changing the current ratio in their favor by such methods. It also provides an opportunity to play on national feelings, increase the degree of patriotism and distract the population from the difficult socio-economic situation associated with the coronavirus pandemic. After all, hundreds of thousands of citizens of the two republics have not been able to go to work in Russia during the pandemic, and the number of young unemployed is already off the scale and poses a threat to governments.

Now we can conclude that as a result of the clashes, Kyrgyzstan turned out to be weaker than its opponent at the moment, which explains Sadyr Zhaparov's peacemaking rhetoric. Although a couple of months before the last major conflict in 2022, he contemptuously offered the Tajiks to exchange their enclaves for lifeless mountain ranges in the south of the republic. This failure of Bishkek's defensive measures, as well as the deadlock in the negotiation process on disputed territories in general, was also influenced by the change of power as a result of another color revolution.

Such bloody events on the border of the two official allies are a wake-up call for the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), since the participating countries under the agreement do not have the right to use weapons against each other. But no one pays attention to this, and Moscow has made great efforts every time to intervene in the conflict and stop its formal allies.

If we consider the deeper objective reasons for what is happening, they lie in the socio-economic plane of the degradation of the region and specifically the Ferghana Valley after the collapse of the USSR, when there were a lot of similar contradictions and disputes over land, water resources, road sections and hydraulic structures. After all, the entire industry disappeared in the same Batken region of Kyrgyzstan or the neighboring Sughd region of Tajikistan as a result of deindustrialization, and farming on small plots of fertile land in the valleys became the only way to survive for millions of residents, where there is a high birth rate and lack of work.

That is why there is such a fierce struggle for individual pillars, for the water distribution station of the "Head" Tortkul reservoir, for scanty patches of territories that were previously not considered even as a dispute at the administrative borders 33 years ago. And now more than one generation has grown up, brought up in a nationalist aggressive spirit, and accordingly the current temporary ceasefire cannot be considered as the end of the conflict, which will only develop over time.

Interestingly, Turkey hastened to take advantage of the clashes, which increased the supply of its weapons to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. At the same time, Ankara is trying to negotiate with Dushanbe, wanting to present itself as a kind of "peacemaker" and mediator.

The July 2022 conflict in the Karakalpak Autonomous Region of Uzbekistan and the interests of Kazakhstan

The situation has been aggravated in recent years by protests by residents of the Karakalpak Autonomous Republic within Uzbekistan, where young people rallied two years ago, opposing the deprivation of a number of their rights and freedoms as a result of new amendments to the Constitution initiated by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

At the same time, some of the bourgeois groups of the autonomous republic, like a number of protesters, began to lean towards secession from Uzbekistan and joining Kazakhstan.

The fact is that Astana has been playing on the separatist sentiments of part of the ruling elite in Karakalpakstan. Indirect evidence of this is the fact that the absolute majority of information materials, including provocative ones, were broadcast during the events of July 1-2, 2022, from the territory of Kazakhstan.

And one of the confirmations of this is the fact that Tashkent immediately made certain concessions to the leadership of Kazakhstan, which was reflected in the resumption of the work of the commission on the demarcation and delimitation of disputed sections of borders. It is obvious that behind the scenes, most likely, the entourage of the President of Uzbekistan Mirziyoyev finally abandoned any territorial claims to Turkestan and Southern Kazakhstan, where there is a large Uzbek diaspora, and these places themselves are culturally and traditionally historically connected more with agricultural Uzbekistan.

That is, all this support for separatism in Karakalpakstan is an information and political game involving Kazakh nationalists and liberals in order to exert pressure on Tashkent. It must be said here that the Kazakh nationalists themselves treated the Karakalpaks very contemptuously and condescendingly, considering them second- and even third-class people. And they "fell in love" with them, and began to call them "brothers" not by chance, but by order from above.

It should also be understood that the Karakalpak Republic, whose population is ethnically and linguistically closer to the Kazakhs than to the Uzbeks, despite the environmental problem with the Aral Sea, is a tasty morsel for possible discord and the initiation of such separatist sentiments and mass movements.

So, in the territory of the autonomy, despite the small population (two million people), huge deposits of gold, gas, iron, phosphorites, bentonite and kaolin clays, table and Glauber salts, granite and marble have been explored. There is also an assumption about the possible occurrence of large volumes of oil.

Therefore, the appetites of the ruling elite of Kazakhstan in a situation where a number of Kazakhstani deposits are fading are now spreading to this important piece of the territory of Uzbekistan, for which it can start an open struggle.

Another circumstance must be taken into account. Astana and Tashkent are irreconcilable rivals, leading a competitive confrontation for primacy and hegemony in the region. And now the Uzbek leadership has every real chance to overtake Kazakhstan in terms of economic growth and production development.

Thus, in 2016-2020, the following results were achieved in the field of attracting investments: over 807 trillion soums or 89 billion dollars of investments in fixed assets were invested from all sources; about 29 billion dollars were attracted from abroad in the form of direct investments and borrowed funds. Over the past year and a half, despite the pandemic, economic growth has only continued.

In the first quarter of 2022, Uzbekistan's GDP growth amounted to 5.8% compared to the same period in 2021, foreign investments worth $2.4 billion were mastered, the forecast indicator was fulfilled by 167%. That is, Uzbekistan is now extremely attractive to investors.

Mirziyoyev himself is pursuing radical neoliberal market reforms and privatization, allowing Western capital to enter strategic sectors of the economy. That is, it is possible that soon American, European and British investments will gradually flow from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan with cheaper labor and a promising domestic market.

Tashkent has another undeniable advantage - a population of 35 million people, of which over 29 million are ethnic Uzbeks. Accordingly, the loss of primacy in the region is deadly for the leadership of Kazakhstan, since the built-up raw material - in fact, the neocolonial export model of the economy cannot exist without Western investments.

Plus, having strengthened, the Uzbek ruling class, led by the energetic and ambitious Mirziyoyev, can establish its hegemony in Central Asia, putting the elites of neighboring republics under its influence and, accordingly, establishing control over energy flows and important transport arteries.

Therefore, the problem of Karakalpakstan now seems to be settled, but it will not be resolved in the near or medium term. In this rivalry, the Karakalpaks can play the role of Kurds for Turkey - that is, a constantly bleeding wound that does not allow Shavkhat Mirziyoyev and the Uzbek ruling class to form a powerful regional power.

It should be understood here that this rivalry is also aggravated by the internal similarity of the regimes of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which are conducting intensive national-state construction based on nationalist ideology. At the same time, it is even more powerful in Tashkent.

That is, both there and there are bourgeois-nationalist dictatorships. And it imposes its ideology of national superiority on its own titular ethnic groups, especially young people, which is fraught with more serious clashes later, if not around Karakalpakstan, then over other land, water, energy and transport disputes, which will only increase in the region due to desertification, population growth and social stratification.

It is obvious that these contradictions will be exploited by external forces, in particular the West, along with Turkey, China and Russia, which are interested in establishing their own control over the region.

The struggle for transport routes

Since the 90s, the ruling classes of the Central Asian republics have begun to build various routes for transporting extracted raw materials to international markets, and in particular to the countries of the European Union and China. These logistics routes to the European continent ran mainly through the territory of Russia, but in the last five or six years the situation has begun to change.

It should be borne in mind that Central Asia itself is a transit territory for transport routes, and in attempts to reorient to the West through "Turkic integration" in Astana, even under Nursultan Nazarbayev, they began to look for other routes bypassing Russia. Practically, the very establishment of the Organization of Turkic States in November 2021 in Istanbul became the intention of the leadership of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to redirect all energy and logistics routes from the region through the Caspian Sea to the South Caucasus and Turkish Anatolia.

On April 1, 2022, the Georgian, Kazakh, Turkish and Azerbaijani sides signed the declaration "On the East-West Trans-Caspian Corridor" in Tbilisi. And earlier, the energy ministers of the Central Asian countries agreed on the need to use the routes proposed by Turkey, and in particular, with participation in the Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (TANAP), with a length of 1.85 thousand km, with a maximum capacity of up to 31 billion cubic meters. This project is also becoming the foundation for the completion of a long-standing venture with the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which will also flow rivers of black gold to European markets from Kazakhstan.

In addition, the Trans-Caspian international transport route makes it possible for the United States, hiding behind its supranational status, to export not only oil, but also other minerals, and especially rare earth metals, the development of deposits of which is already planned by American companies in Kazakhstan. And this is already a blow to China, which is a monopolist in this area, and recently threatened to block the export of rare earths in the event of a ban from the West on the supply of semiconductors.

Already this year, the European Union has decided to invest more than 40 billion euros over five years in the modernization of Kazakhstan's railways, highways, airports and port infrastructure in the Caspian Sea. Additional access roads to deposits of rare earth metals and other deposits of strategic minerals, including uranium, will be built. The Government of Kazakhstan, in turn, announced the transfer of 22 airports, 2 ports of Aktau and Kuryk to European companies with the right of privatization.

At the same time, Beijing has so far shown interest in this Trans-Caspian route, doubting the capacity of railway transport and Kazakh ports in the Caspian Sea. But as a safety net, since China is also competing with European and American companies for the region, the Chinese leadership decided to resume work on the construction project of the China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan railway, 454 kilometers long and bypassing the territory of Kazakhstan.

At the same time, this route will go further through Turkmenistan to northern Iran and then also to the South Caucasus or Turkey to the EU countries. It turned out that such a decision clearly contradicts the interests of Washington and Astana, since the alternative route turns out to be beyond the control of Western capital, and the Kazakh ruling class receives transit competitors in the person of Bishkek and Tashkent.

In addition, Moscow is also actively building its logistics route bypassing the territory of Kazakhstan, whose authorities have joined Western sanctions and are waging constant trade and transport wars with Kyrgyzstan, despite common membership in the EAEU, and Uzbekistan. The governor of the Astrakhan region, Igor Babushkin, announced in the summer of 2023 that now Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan will be able to use the new multimodal transport corridor to Russia and back, bypassing Kazakhstan through the Caspian Sea.

That is, commodity flows from these republics are redirected and unloaded by sea to Astrakhan. From the point of view of logistics, the overland route through the Kazakh territories is faster and cheaper compared to the new corridor through Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and the Caspian Sea — after all, the distance is longer, plus transshipment to merchant ships. But the political reasons for the sharp cooling of relations with Astana and the possibility of closing borders dictate their demands.

At the same time, at the end of 2022, Russia began to form a "triple gas union" with the participation of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which are experiencing a sharp shortage in natural gas. Such an association makes it possible for Moscow, through the modernization of the gas infrastructure of these republics, to be able to transport gas through their territory along the southern route to Pakistan and India.

Moreover, taking into account Armenia's reorientation to the West and Azerbaijan's unreliability, the Kremlin is seriously considering the issue of laying one of the branches of the North–South geostrategic route through the territory of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. This further strengthens the interest of Russian capital in Central Asia as a transit zone for redirecting its raw materials to the markets of China, India and Southeast Asia.

Given Uzbekistan's booming economy, population growth and urban expansion, as well as the needs of the chemical industry, Russian gas supplies are becoming critical for Tashkent as well. Moreover, the ruling elite needs cheap fuel from Russia in order to extract additional super profits. That is why the Uzbek leadership joined the EAEU as an observer in order to receive such preferential tariffs from Moscow, as well as customs and other relief.

At the same time, Tashkent also has its own long-standing ambitious plans, previously supported by Washington and London, for the construction of a railway line through Afghanistan to Pakistan along the Mazar–I-Sharif-Kabul-Peshawar line. According to the idea, the new highway will provide direct access to Pakistani seaports – Karachi, Qasem and Gwadar.

After the Americans fled Afghanistan in 2021, this project hung in the air, but after the start of its own and Russia's redirection of energy flows from the West to Asia, this route may also find a second wind, as it becomes in demand again. Moreover, Tashkent, unlike Dushanbe, has established friendly relations with the Taliban regime from the very beginning.

All this creates a tangle of contradictions due to the difference in interests of the leading imperialist powers in the region in the extraction of raw materials and their transit, which will try in one way or another to consolidate their positions and, conversely, weaken the influence of competitors. At the same time, Turkey, through the Organization of Turkic States in tandem with the United States, Great Britain and the EU, can dramatically strengthen the pro-Western vector in the policy of the ruling groups of the Central Asian republics, which can cause a sharp imbalance of forces and provoke new conflicts involving Russia and China.

This is especially true for Kazakhstan, whose leadership, with the support of the Azerbaijani authorities, is becoming the main conductor of "Turkic integration" in the region and the mainstay of Western corporations. Armenia's departure from the bloc with Russia may provoke a chain reaction and sharply weaken the CSTO and the EAEU, giving Astana the opportunity to accelerate its own reorientation towards the EU and the United States.

This creates an explosive situation in this region, which, it would seem, was away from the main theaters of military operations.

Current findings

Thus, the republics of Central Asia are also entering a period of socio-economic and political instability, as a result of the crisis phenomena in the global capitalist economy and the struggle of the imperialist powers will be subject to severe pressure. At the same time, pressure will come both from within and from below from the protest-minded masses of young unemployed and working people, as well as from neighbors in connection with the proliferation of conflicts on the borders due to land, water and energy contradictions.

Moreover, the capitalist states of the region are also constantly competing with each other within the framework of the imperialist system. Outside interference by the leading powers can aggravate the situation or blow up the region, causing interethnic clashes and "Afghanization", that is, the collapse of the former Soviet Central Asian republics

In this situation, our organization has a responsibility: to represent as broadly as possible a socialist alternative that can offer an outlet to the workers and the broad popular strata of Kazakhstan. We put the idea of the maximum possible unity of the working and popular strata of all nationalities in the region at the center of our propaganda.

Especially in the case when workers at an enterprise come into conflict with a foreign owner – we call for the need to try to unite all workers in a trade union and fight for such demands as equal pay for equal work regardless of nationality, against racial segregation and discrimination, for jobs for all.

Putting forward the slogan of nationalization, in parallel, the demand for operational control and management is also being put forward – that the enterprise be withdrawn from foreign companies not just for subsequent transfer to a local owner.

Of course, this struggle cannot be separated from the struggle against capitalism, since it is unacceptable to create illusions about the possibility of some kind of "workers' self-government" in the conditions of capitalism and under the rule of capitalists. Therefore, this is only a step for the development of the political consciousness of the working people, who should be instilled with the understanding that only with the construction of a new socialist society can real workers' control be realized and the institutions of workers' power be established.

The current capitalist crisis, which has particularly affected the extractive economies of the region, accompanied by the inability of the authorities to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, has caused a new surge of social and protest activity not only in Kazakhstan, but also in neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. A new generation of young people, with no prospects of getting even low-paid jobs, internal migrants, the "self-employed", as well as working-class detachments in the extractive industries, are becoming that explosive mixture of future social upheavals.

 Despite the current counter-revolution, the terry reaction and regression, the achievements of the Soviet government during the socialist construction and the formation of new nations were still so high that these countries were not completely abandoned in the Middle Ages. There is also a common cultural and educational foundation and basis, which creates a certain prospect for the peoples of Central Asia in the event of a new revolutionary crisis to break out of the fetters of double oppression and raise the question of the socialization of production and a radical change in the entire vector of socio-economic development.